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Welcome to the my blog. My name is Lucy Farfort i'm a freelance illustrator & designer maker. This is where you can find out what i've been up to of late, read my attempts at a decent post & the rantings of a visual addict. Hope you like it. You can contact me to say 'hi' by email on lucy@lucyshappyplace.comIf you would like to take a look at my work (& i would very much like you to) please visit my site: lucyshappyplace.com

Saturday, 18 October 2014

Malawi trip #2 - The Safari

On the good advice of Tom and Janey from
Mabuya Camp we pre-booked a safari in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park
with Kiboko one of the more upmarket Lilongwe establishments.

Arriving in good time and thinking we were all sorted, we boarded the bus along
with another 16 safari-ers (is that a word?). Before heading off the driver
addressed everyone to make sure we had all the necessary documents for the
Malawi-Zambia border. Passport, check! $50 for the visa, check! Yellow fever
certificate…….uh oh!
The one thing we didn’t have. After the driver consulted briefly with the booking
agent, in true Malawian style we decided to try our luck and hope it would
be overlooked. In fact what they said was – just have some additional
cash ready. Ah yes, the good ol’ bribe. If in doubt – bribe your way out, a take home message from the holiday.

So off we set on the six hour journey.

At this point we’d only been in Africa two
days and the views from the bus were a real eye opener into what life is like
for the average Malawian.
Here are a few photos captured from the bus, including some impressive hand painted adverts:

At border control we lined up to have
our temperature taken before going on to the office for the admin bit. ‘Sshhh,
don’t mention the yellow fever certificate’. Luckily they didn’t ask
anyone for this, so got away with it.
We’d actually previously been advised that they don’t often ask for the
certificate except in the case of tourist buses like ours, because there’s
potential money to be made.

Finally arriving at the camp, a
guide showed us around. There we were thinking we’d be roughing it on roll mats
& sleeping bags (which we’d brought along), and this place was uber plush -
swimming pool, swanky bar overlooking a hippo inhabited river, a library, plus a
gym and a spa no less!

Definitely more glamping than camping and a
far cry from the Zambia we’d travelled through, just yards down the road. The
tents had electricity and actual beds. Just take a look at their website (checkout that pool)

The lodging was situated in the National
Park itself so there were monkeys and baboons roaming around before we even
started the drives.

In a serious voice the guide then told us to make sure we had no food
especially apples in our tents as

elephants can smell them and will try and get
in.

For some reason though I didn’t twig from this pep talk that wild elephants
would be strolling round the campsite. And it was only at 3 in the morning
after being woken up by some distinctly un-human snuffling from behind the tent
followed by the hulk of a giant bull elephant striding a mere five feet from
Dave’s head past the canvas, that I caught on. Needless to say I lie there
bricking it!

I was just grateful that our campsite
wasn’t over the other side of the river where the lions and hyenas were.
Elephants on camp:

The safari consisted of four drives, which
we did with Fred, our very knowledgeable guide and two other Brit couples –
Jack and Heather from Edinburgh and Tom and Lyndsey from London.

We were there for two days and on each there was a morning drive and an evening
one. The downside was that the morning one entailed a 5am rise, ready to ride
out for 6.